We’ve all had that experience at one time or another. You study the form, the ratings, the opposition and whichever way you look at the race, you know the horse will win.

You don’t “think” the horse will win. You KNOW it will. You’re that confident.

And then it doesn’t.

There are many reasons why this happens. One of them is that the ratings, form and running comments of the horse don’t really match reality.

For example, the running comments for the previous race may say: “Ran on strongly near finish, just failed…”.

But what if the horse didn’t really run on strongly near the finish, but the front horse was getting tired and slowed right down?

That would change things dramatically. Often, the only way to find out the “reality” of previous races is to watch the videos. You’ll frequently find that the comments regarding a horse simply do not match reality. Or at the very least, have been overgenerous in interpretation.

Many years ago, getting hold of the videos of horses’ previous races was difficult. These days, with sites like the Racing Post, it’s very straightforward to do. With the Racing Post for instance, there are different paid options including one where you can watch an unlimited amount of video form.

Horse Racing: Video Form can assist you.

Following up form study with watching video can be time consuming, but here are a few tips to use video form effectively:

1) Use video form to back up your original form study, solidify your conclusions and opinions.

2) In many instances, watching full races isn’t necessary. With many sites (including the Racing Post), you’re able to watch the final stages of races. Use this feature to save time.

3) Only watch races that are relevant, if you’re keen on horse running on Good to Soft going for instance, then it may be wise to only look at the most recent runs on Good to Soft going. The same goes for distance, the course or anything else.

There’s an art to using video form effectively when selecting your own horse racing tips — as with most things, the more often you do it, the better you’ll become at it.

Once you start using video form in your form study and selection process, you’ll probably never go without it again.

If you bet on UK horse racing regularly like I do, there’s no doubt that being able to check your results quickly is a huge benefit.

The most obvious choice is the Racing Post website, although they aren’t the quickest when it comes to updating.

Often, it’s useful to know which horses have won as soon as possible after a race has been completed.

One of the best sites I’ve found for getting the latest horse racing results, is the Sporting Life …

SPORTING LIFE RACING RESULTS

… not only is layout beautiful for each course — inside an “at a glance” table — there’s also a fast results section, which shows the latest results from the last eight races around the country.

In my opinion, the Sporting Life has a superior results section to the Racing Post, or any other horse racing website that I’ve come across.

Whether you’re checking your own selections, horse racing tips you’ve been given, or selections from anywhere else … it’s well worth bookmarking the Sporting Life’s racing results page for all the latest results from around the country.

Believe me, once you’ve used the results section from the Sporting Life, you won’t go anywhere else for your results.

If that isn’t enough, the results pages also automatically “refresh” regularly — so you don’t have to keep refreshing the pages manually to see the latest.

If you’re serious about making money from horse racing, you either need to have a good grasp of form study, or alternatively need a decent horse racing tipster to follow.

Horse racing tipsters are a dime a dozen, there’s no shortage of people prepared to sell you tips who don’t know how to make a profit in the long run.

The good news is, there are many decent tipsters around, you just need to know how to find and identify them.

Even when you do have a good list of profitable tipsters, another thing to bear in mind is that whatever tipster you sign up with, must be suitable to your style of betting and lifestyle.

For example, if you’ve got work during the day, you’re not going to find it possible to follow a tipster who needs you to bet during racing in the afternoon.

If you’ve got a small betting bank, you likely don’t want to be following a laying tipster who provides high priced lays; your betting bank probably won’t be able to handle any big priced winners coming in, when you’re laying to lose.

So all in all, not only do you have to find a profitable racing tipster, but you’ve also got to do your research and find one which fits into your lifestyle, and is suited to your circumstances.

Also, if you’re going to go with a low strike rate/high odds tipster then you’ve got to be emotionally prepared for long losing runs in exchange for a long term profit.

Are you prepared to go 20 bets without a winner, before a 33/1 winner comes in and puts you into profit?

Ask yourself these questions, before you take the plunge and invest in any horse racing tipster
or service.

Another thing to bear in mind is what methods the tipster uses to make his selections.

Does he use inside information?

Form study? Software?

Or a combination of methods.

Once you’ve found some decent horse racing tips you mustn’t forget to set aside a betting bank for the particular tipster.

by Craig Jones

So, just a couple more months to go before the National Hunt/Jumps season starts in October.

The Flat Season this year has certainly been “interesting”, the weather hasn’t been too bad so the ground has been predictable for the most part.

While some people may disagree with me, I’m liking the smaller fields at many meetings as opposed to those big field handicaps.

The problem with those — in my opinion — is that they’re nothing but a lottery and more often than not some 20/1, 33/1 outsider pops up that few people predicted would win.

So all in all, I’m not a big fan of big field handicaps … I think that the lack of them this season, and the previous season has been a positive thing for punters.

There are still a lot of favourites winning (many are overpriced), many people forget that a 5/4 shot with a true 1/2 chance of winning is a value bet — just as a 10/1 shot with a 5/1 chance of winning is.